National Statistics
National studies provide a picture of rape in America. Findings vary dramatically due to research methods and definitions. Whatever methods are used, national studies reveal that sexual abuse occurs at an alarming rate.
National sexual assault statistics commonly sited
Page Contents
Child Sexual Abuse | Violence Against Women | Acquaintance Rape | Male Victims | Legal | References
People may be reluctant to acknowledge to researchers or to police that they were raped. Studies that rely on police reports represent a small portion of actual sexual assaults, since this crime is underreported. Terminology also influences the results. Asking “Have you ever had sex against your will?” versus “Have you been raped?” produces different estimates.
Studies using the term “forcible rape” provide conservative estimates. Forcible rape is defined as a sex act without consent that involved the use of force or threat of force. This may not include assaults involving drugs and alcohol, coercion or statutory rape.
Child Sexual Abuse
One in three girls and one in six boys is sexually abused before the age of 18. (Russell 1988)
In a national random survey, 27% of women and 16% of men disclosed that they had been sexually abused as children. (Finkelhor 1990)
Violence Against Women
At least one in three women in the world has been beaten, coerced into having sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. (Population Reports 2000)
Between one in four and one in five college women are victims of completed or attempted rape during their college years. (Fisher 2000)
One out of every six American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed forcible rape in their lifetime (14.8% completed rape; 2.8% attempted rape). A total of 17.7 million women have been victims of these crimes. (Tjaden & Thoennes 2000)
One out of eight adult women, or about 145,000 adult women in Iowa, has been the victim of forcible rape sometime in her lifetime. (Kilpatrick 2004)
Acquaintance Rape
In eight out of ten rape cases, the victim knew the perpetrator. (Tjaden & Thoennes 2000)
93% of juvenile sexual assault victims knew their attacker; 34.2% were family members and 58.7% acquaintances. Only seven percent of the perpetrators were strangers to the victim. (Sexual Assault of Young Children 2000)
Male Victims
About three percent of American men – a total of 2.78 million men – have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. (Tjaden & Thoennes 2000)
One in every ten rape victims is male. (NCVS 2003)
Legal
Of all crimes, rape is one of the most underreported, making it difficult to count. (Bachar & Koss 2001)
The National Women’s Study found that 84% of women did not report their rapes to police. (Kilpatrick 1992)
References
Bachar K, Koss MP. From prevalence to prevention: closing the gap between what we know about rape and what we do. In: Renzetti C, Edleson J, Bergen RK, editors. Sourcebook on violence against women. Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage; 2001.
Finkelhor et al. (1990) Sexual Abuse in a National Survey of Adult Men and Women: Prevalence, Characteristics and Risk Factors. Child Abuse and Neglect 14: 19-28.
Fisher BS, Cullen FT, Turner MG. The sexual victimization of college women. Washington (DC): Department of Justice (US), National Institute of Justice; 2000. Publication No. NCJ 182369. Available at www.ncjrs.org
Kilpatrick DG, Edmunds CN, Seymour AK. (1992) Rape in America: a report to the nation. Arlington (VA): National Victim Center and Medical University of South Carolina.
Kilpatrick, D.G., & Ruggiero, K.J. (2004) Rape in Iowa: A Report to the State. National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center. Available from IowaCASA
National Crime Victimization Survey (2002). Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice.
Population Reports: Ending Violence Against Women, 2000.
Russell, Diana. The Incidence and Prevalence of Intrafamilial and Extrafamilial Sexual Abuse of Female Children. Handbook on Sexual Abuse of Children. Ed. Lenore Walker. Springer Publishing Co., 1988.
Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
Tjaden P, Thoennes N. Full report of the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of violence against women: findings from the national violence against women survey. Washington (DC): National Institute of Justice; 2000. Report NCJ 183781. Available from
(`www.rainn.org/fullnvawsurvey.pdf)
More statistics links available in Resources
